


Unspoken Goodbyes

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage/SPN
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot is finally forced to leave Ellen and the life they were starting to build together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://angst-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://angst-bingo.livejournal.com/)**angst_bingo** , for the prompt "the last time".

  
She’d spared him good-bye in the end, unable to trust that she wouldn’t break down at the reality of losing him. Instead, she’d pretended to be asleep as he carefully disentangled himself, and slipped quietly out of her bed. It was the coward’s way out, but Ellen consoled herself with the thought that she’d been sparing Eliot as much as herself.

_I fell in love with you._

Saying the words had cost him – she could tell. It was vulnerability in the very moment neither one of them could afford it. As she lay quiet in the darkness, Ellen wondered if she should have made her own confession – admitted that his feelings were reciprocated in every way that mattered.

 _He knows,_ she decided, as she sensed him gather the last of his things and close the bedroom door behind him. She’d shown him in every way she could. Saying the words aloud would only have made his leaving harder.

“Hell of a ride, cowboy,” she whispered, clinging to the memory of his arms around her, and the scent of him on her skin and in her bed. A year ago, Eliot Spencer had been a charming stranger, drinking uncharacteristically sophisticated beer at one end of the Roadhouse bar. He’d carried the smell of mischief and adventure, along with a white knight complex that seemed to put him at ground zero of whatever trouble happened to be lurking around.

She’d been lonely and afraid the night he’d saved her from being shot in the parking lot by two of her regulars, and earlier in the evening he’d saved John Winchester’s boys from being lynched by a would-be mob of hunters. Sex had been the natural outcome of the night’s adventures – she’d wanted him in her bed, and he hadn’t been interested in saying no.

Ellen had privately admitted to Jo that she was giving Eliot a week before something would come up to drag him away. “It’s not just the hunter thing,” she admitted as they worked away at inventorying the bar’s stash of alcohol. “That’s a man without roots – without a home. Whatever damage is lurking behind those eyes of his will have him on the road again soon enough.”

Her conviction had only grown as the first week spun into a second, and she decided it would be a good idea to have Ash research the mysterious Eliot Spencer. “Man’s the proverbial riddle wrapped in a big old enigma taco,” the computer expert had said. “I got redacted black ops files all over cyberspace, and rewards in at least three different countries I never even heard of.” What little information he’d managed to dig up only reinforced Ellen’s belief that what had come into her life was something far more complicated than a stranger with a “past”.

She knew the smart thing to do would have been to confront him right away – demand the truth, then send him packing – but as weeks spun into months, Ellen began to wonder if a deeper truth wasn’t being played out in front of her eyes. Eliot was gradually making a place for himself in her life, and in the process revealing a far gentler soul than the monster Ash seemed to have uncovered.

Then he saved Jo twice – once from a supernatural problem, and once from an attack far more mundane, but no less horrible. He’d defended her with no less ferocity than Ellen herself would have, and she knew in the depth of her heart she had the truth of him at last. It didn’t matter what the rest of the world thought of him – all that counted was the man he’d decided to be; the man she wanted in her life, for the rest of their lives.

Or so she’d believed, right up until the afternoon his past had ridden into town and called him by name.

Ellen flinched as the sound of the front door closing reached her ears. “I love you,” she whispered, her voice thick in the darkness with the tears she wouldn’t let herself cry.


End file.
